Each site is deposit-tested with real New Zealand dollars. No demo play, no armchair reviews. Here's the end-to-end process, including how we weight the scoring and where we draw the disqualification line.
Before a single dollar leaves our account, we filter on three hard gates: a traceable licence (MGA, DIA-aware, Kahnawake, or a major Curaçao parent), a visible wagering multiplier on the bonus landing page, and a published payout-timing estimate. If any one is missing, the site doesn't make the test list.
Each reviewer signs up using their real Lower Hutt address, an NZ phone number, and an NZ-issued passport or driver's licence scan. We submit KYC documents during the signup session rather than deferring to payout day - that tells us how fast the verification queue runs under normal conditions.
Every site we rank gets a $5 NZD deposit. We rotate the payment method across tests: POLi (primary), Visa debit, Skrill, and BTC. That way we're not scoring a site's fastest payment path and calling it "average" - we're testing the methods our readers actually use.
We clear the bonus on slots contributing 100% to wagering. No table game shortcuts. Aroha records the time taken, the variance experienced, and whether we hit any stake limits on bonus funds (some sites cap bonus play at $5/spin).
Whatever balance remains after wagering is withdrawn immediately. We log the time-to-payout from request to funds landing in the receiving wallet. Fastest on record at the time of writing is Mirax at 38 minutes to Skrill. Slowest is Jackpot City at four working days to Visa debit.
Bonus terms change. Payout processors change. Licences sometimes lapse. We re-run the full deposit/play/withdraw cycle on every ranked casino every three months, and update wagering multipliers and bonus spin counts in between when a casino notifies us of a change.
We use affiliate links for revenue. Several of the casinos on our list pay us a commission when a reader signs up through one of our links and deposits. No commission rate influences the ranking - that's set by the scoring above. We disclose the affiliate relationship at the foot of every page and on every outbound link with rel="nofollow sponsored".